


like magnets

by birdjay



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, Ficlet, Happy Ending, Hurt Steve Rogers, M/M, POV Steve Rogers, Protective Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers argues with God, Steve Rogers is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-02 02:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17879204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdjay/pseuds/birdjay
Summary: “I’m dead, aren’t I?” Steve asks, tilting his head at the being again.Not-Erskine nods again. “You really weren’t supposed to make it this long…” He -- It -- They -- flick a hand behind them, and suddenly Steve’s life begins to play, flashes of memories, of faces, of things he’d done. They go quick, just blinks, mere nanoseconds in time as flicker across the white.





	like magnets

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I'll be frank with you -- Steve literally argues with God in this ficlet. If that's not your jam, then don't read any further than this. Another warning for you -- this is short, like really really short, and it came to me on the drive home from work one night. I banged this out all in one go, so, take that for what you will. 
> 
> thanks to [panacaea_knits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/panacea_knits) who betaed this really super quick me!

 

 

He wakes crumpled on...nothing. There is nothing beneath him but white. The surface -- whatever it is that he’s laying on -- registers only briefly against his body. It’s soft, hard, smooth, rough all at once. He runs his palm over the ground trying to parse out what exactly it is, but is quickly shocked to see that the blood that had been all over his knuckles was gone. He turns his hands over -- all his hurts are gone. The scrapes, the cuts, the finger that had been broken, all of it is healed.

 “Steven.”

The voice comes from everywhere, all around him. It’s familiar, somehow. Faintly German. He pulls himself up to sitting, and finally looks beyond himself. It’s all white. Everything endlessly, except for one figure standing a few yards away from him. 

“Dr. Erskine?” Steve asks, tilting his head. Dr. Erskine is dead. He’d seen it happen, and had been devastated by the loss.

“No, I’m simply...borrowing his form,” Not-Erskine says, with a sad little smile. “It puts people at ease, to see a familiar face upon entering this realm.” The man-being-thing blinks, and then tilts their head at Steve. “Would you prefer another form?” 

Steve watches as Erskine’s body shimmers, and between one blink and the next, his mother appears. Or, _not_ , because he knows it’s just something borrowing her looks, but still. Sarah Rogers looks as she ever did, too thin, greying brown hair pulled back with a ribbon. She’s wearing that daisy yellow dress he loved as a child. It sends a sharp shooting pain through his heart to see her warm brown eyes looking up at him. “Is this better?” The being asks, in Sarah Rogers’ voice.

“No, please...no,” Steve says, shaking his head violently. He can’t, no. He can’t look at his mother and know that it’s not really her. 

“How about this one?” The being asks, shimmering again, as it pulls itself together in the form of Dum-Dum Dugan, smiling softly. “Or, I could…” It shimmers again, briefly pausing on familiar faces, long dead. Falsworth, Gabe, Morita, all the Howlies minus one. Colonel Phillips appears, looking grim, and then he shimmers away to become Howard Stark looking smarmy, and then, Joey-the-grocer, then Tom-the-milkman, and every goddamn person he knew in the 40’s appears one right after the other, rapid-fire. The being stops on Peggy, looking as radiant and beautiful as she had the day he’d met her. It tilts her head at him, considering.

“Not her,” Steve says, holding out a hand. He closes his eyes, and shakes his head. He can’t. He can’t deal with this. “Please, not her,” he asks again, opening one eye to check.

The being reverts back to Dr. Erskine, and nods once. “As you wish.”

“What are you? Where am I?” Steve asks, finally pulling himself up to standing. He brushes non-existent dirt off his hands onto his thighs. His uniform is pristine.

“Hm,” Not-Erskine says, tapping a finger on his lips. “What do you remember?”

Steve closes his eyes, and thinks. They were fighting out there. Aliens, again. An army of them, brought down from space by Thanos. They were tearing apart Wakanda, he remembers that much. His team was there. Bucky was there. T’Challa and Shuri, the Dora Milaje, that talking racoon, the tree...they were all there. And they were losing.

“I’m dead, aren’t I?” Steve asks, tilting his head at the being again.

Not-Erskine nods again. “You really weren’t supposed to make it this long…” He -- It -- They -- flick a hand behind them, and suddenly Steve’s life begins to play, flashes of memories, of faces, of things he’d done. They go quick, just blinks, mere nanoseconds in time as flicker across the white. Looking up at his mom from a sick bed again, Bucky’s childhood face -- one tooth missing in the front, looking up at Bucky from yet another sick bed, watching Minnie and Bucky dancing like mad, Bucky and Becca bickering in the Barnes’s kitchen, himself looking down at his mother as she coughs over and over, and over, DumDum and Morita laughing around a fire, Bucky falling, Natasha looking at him with a maybe-smile on her face, Tony ranting about something, Bucky’s mask falling off mid-fight, Sam sitting next to him in the hospital, Bucky with long hair and a black metal arm smiling at him like the sun.

His life.

“Who are you?” Steve repeats, yanking his vision away to stare at the thing wearing Erskine’s body. He wants an answer. He moves closer, carefully, until he’s right in front of Not-Erskine.

“Death,” they say, as if it’s obvious. “The Unmaker, but also The Maker -- you would know me best as God.”

“You’re God,” Steve says, narrowing his eyes.

“Yes.”

Steve shifts his weight subtly, rears back, and throws a punch directly at God-Erskine’s jaw. It connects -- he wasn’t really expecting it to -- and sends a thrumming feeling right up his arm and into his shoulder. His knuckles ache for a moment, before the pain disappears entirely.

God-Erskine takes the punch like a champ, his head rolling back with the force, before bringing a hand up to rub at his jaw. “I suppose I deserved that.”

“No shit,” Steve says, glaring at him. He points at God-Erskine’s jaw. “That was for Bucky.”

He’d lost his faith sometime between losing his mom, and then Bucky and waking up in a new century. He’d never really recovered it, and didn’t want to any longer. If there was a God -- which clearly there was -- then why did he deserve Steve’s faith after what he’d been through? After what Bucky had been through? Was there anyone who’d still believe in a loving God after learning the truth of their life stories? He didn’t think so.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” God-Erskine says, nodding. “Your match.” He flicks his hand at the memories playing behind them, and they suddenly become just about Bucky. Bucky’s face when he’d first met him, Bucky’s face when he’d hauled Steve out of another alleyway broken and bleeding, Bucky’s face when he’d rescued him at Azzano, Bucky’s face screaming as he fell, Bucky’s face confused and scared as he punched Steve’s face in, Bucky’s face over and over, in every iteration he’d ever seen his best friend.

“My what?” Steve asks, blinking.

“Your _match_ ,” God repeats, again like Steve’s an idiot. “Your two souls are so tightly wound around each other it’s impossible to separate you.”

“But you _did_ ,” Steve snaps, suddenly spitting mad. Anger rears up from deep inside him, a fire blistering hot. “Time and time again. Over and over. You broke us apart.”

“It wasn’t really me. I don’t...do much, anymore. Free will, and all that. I watch, mostly. Intervene sometimes, if I deem it worthy…”

“And we weren’t worthy?” Steve asks, raising an eyebrow.

God shrugs. “You were torn apart by circumstance, but each time you snapped back together like magnets. It didn’t matter how far, or how long, you always found each other.”

Steve turns away. The knowledge drops into him like a stone in a deep well. It settles somewhere near his stomach, and grows warm, lighting him up inside. They _had_ always found each other. Through wars, and brainwashing, and memory, and fights to the death. Through time itself, even. They found each other.

Steve had loved Bucky unashamedly the moment he’d met him. He’d always loved him. Like a friend, then a brother, and then something more. He’d hidden it, deep inside himself, not wanting to spoil whatever it was that they had between them. But now there would be no chance to tell him how he felt. No chance to see if Bucky felt the same way.

They wouldn’t snap back together this time.

Steve whirls back to face God again, eyes alight in anger. “Send me back.”

“Why?” God asks, tilting his head again. He looks so much like Erskine, it hurts. Steve swallows the pain, pushes it aside. It’s not important. He’s not him.

“I’m not done,” Steve says, holding his ground.

“With what?”

“With him,” Steve says, nodding towards the memories of Bucky playing behind God. One flashes by of them on Coney Island, Bucky grinning at him without a care in the world. His heart hurts again, a deep wallowing pain. How can he go on without Bucky? How can he do anything without him? Their _souls_ are intertwined. “With life. With anything. I’m not _done_.”

“Plenty of people die before they’re done. What makes you special?”

“I’m not. You owe us, don’t you? You owe us after what we’ve been through. We deserve a chance. A chance to make it work,” Steve says, glaring at the being wearing Erskine’s face.

“It’ll hurt,” God warns, raising both eyebrows. “It won’t be pleasant.”

“I don’t care.” What does he care about pain? He’s never been a stranger to it, he’s welcomed it like an old friend time and time again over the course of his life. What’s a little pain, to him?

“I suspected you wouldn’t,” God says, smiling. He snaps his fingers, and a door appears to the right of them. He nods towards it. “Go on then.”

Steve stays where he is. “Just like that? You’re sending me back, just like that?”

God shrugs, holding both arms out with his palms up. “Why not?”

Steve continues to stay put, unsure.

“Go,” God says, nodding towards it again. He takes a step close to Steve, and smiles. He leans in, his face a foot or so away, and whispers, “Hold him tight. Don’t let go.” 

Steve looks at Erskine’s kind eyes, his rough clothing, messy hair, and nods. He turns, leaving the old man where he is. It’s merely a step or two to the door. He stares at it, the plain white nothingness of it, before taking the silver knob in hand and turning it. 

The door opens and he steps through.

He wakes up.

  
  
  



End file.
